This has been a famous 2-3 star restaurant since forever, but for me it’s a place with all sorts of contradictions. It’s an Asian-looking temple with top architecture from the late ’60s, but it’s on a tiny side street in an ugly neighbourhood of low-cost towers in a corner of Munich where no-one would suggest a top restaurant and where it’s quite hard to find. An exposed concrete shell from the outside, but with chef Hans Haas for the last 25 years inside — a chef who grew up on a poor alpine farm with such direct access to ingredients that he never stopped cooking on the same local, unspoiled base.

After walking around a bit in this ugly area, step inside and ask the friendly waiters if you can have a look around. An overwhelming, all-orange world opens up. You can almost grab the refreshing modernism of those years. It has the same orange, construction date & tiles as metro station Marienplatz. And of course, you will never regret sitting down for their well-priced lunch offers.

The contradictions peaked one night in late autumn: the chef and his employees stay overnight, trucks with tons of “Marillen” (local name for apricots) arrive and they cook jam — 1500 kg of jam = 7500 glasses — one simple and traditional recipe only. Can you imagine how many hours it took them to clean up the sticky floors, walls & ovens until they could restart their sensible top cuisine? By the way, the color of the jam was deep orange, of course.